


Lost in the Void

by Hypatia_66



Category: Sapphire and Steel
Genre: Episode Related, Existential Crisis, F/M, Gen, Love, Quantum Mechanics, The Void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 21:30:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15782493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hypatia_66/pseuds/Hypatia_66
Summary: Assignment six leaves Sapphire and Steel trapped. It is in them to discover how to escape.





	Lost in the Void

Steel drew the red and white check curtains to hide the empty view. He turned to Sapphire. “Now what?”

She looked at him thoughtfully. “There are several possibilities,” she said. “One, of course, is suspended animation – which would save us a lot of boredom.”

“Last resort,” said Steel. “What else?” He smiled faintly and moved away to wander round the room. He opened each of the doors and found only emptiness outside. “Even the rest of the building no longer exists,” he said. “This room exists simply because we are in it.”

“Meaning?”

Steel frowned. “There are many dimensions, but the one significant fundamental of the physical universe is that everything, including this room, exists in not just three dimensions; it also exists in a fourth – time.”

“Yes. And?”

“We are Time Agents, subject to Time but we can operate across it.”

“We can’t operate across Time when it doesn’t exist outside this room,” Sapphire said flatly. “We’re not even in space, Steel, and we are outside of Time.”

“But we have a history, we are linked to the past and the future – and therefore, I believe, subject to quantum entanglement. That must mean that we _remain_ part of a space-time continuum.” He stared at her. “If someone tries to find out where we are, all the possibilities will begin to collapse until they find us.”

Sapphire looked sceptical and remarked, “Only if quantum entanglement exists across the void.” She looked suddenly grave. “Unless a collapsed possibility puts us in another universe while in theirs we cease to exist.”

“Well, we have an eternity in which to find out if anyone is looking. Though in the short term, of course, Silver might be,” said Steel, slightly mocking. He continued, “If that doesn’t work – we could try to tap into dark energy and propel ourselves out of this void.”

“And how do you propose we do that when we have no access to dark energy?”

“I wonder if it was dark energy trapped in those boxes,” said Steel, pointing at the now redundant boxes and the miniature chess pieces they now contained.

“Whatever it was, it has been dispersed.”

Steel looked glum and picked up one of the boxes and emptied it. It was now just an empty box.

Time passed – or seemed to.

“It occurs to me,” said Sapphire, “that by existing in the void at all, this room may be, in effect, dimensionless – a singularity.”

“So, if we destabilised it, the room might expand into three dimensions and exist in time.”

“But we don’t know what energy might be released by creating time. We might create a new universe and destroy ourselves in the process.”

There was silence for a while. Nothing changed around them. Not even dust fell.

Steel’s voice emerged from the silence at last. “Are we static, or moving, in the void? Can we actually _be_ located or followed?”

Sapphire sighed. Steel was still pursuing a quantum argument, convinced that if anyone were looking for them, they would have to locate them like a static particle.

“There is no way of knowing. No forward or back, no momentum, nothing to define our locus.”

“I know...you’re right, of course…  You think of something, Sapphire.”

Sapphire gazed at her partner, who was so nice to look at in this human guise, handsome, attractive to her human eyes. She had once, when in a suspended state and as through a fog, heard him trying to bring her back. He had said that he loved her. She had only remembered it much later and had never summoned up the courage to ask him about it. Was this the right moment?

He was staring at her in surprise and she blushed a little to be found watching him so fixedly. “What is it, Sapphire?” he said and reeled a little when she smiled that beautiful smile.

“There’s no-one I would have wanted to spend eternity with more, you know.”

Steel took a deep breath and reached for her hands. Raising them to his lips, he said, “That’s the only good thing about this mess.”

“There must be some way of returning to existence in time. The answer is in us somewhere. We still exist, we’re together.”

His hands slid up her arms and she moved into his embrace willingly. “Sapphire,” he said.

Sapphire looked into his eyes. “Steel?”

His answer was a tender human kiss. It held them for eternity in ecstatic non-being. Aglow with love, their elemental, internal voices expressed it, their human bodies clung, the atoms of which they were composed blended. The silent implosion of energy that it created flung the doors wide. The void surrounded them and was gone in the blink of an eye. For a moment or two their union held as they stood in a shaft of light. Becoming aware that it was sunlight, they released each other and looked round. The building was restored, the petrol pumps were visible through the open door, they could smell the grass and trees outside, hear the birds. Even the muffled roar of the motorway was a kind of proof.

“Is _that_ what it needed?” said Steel in wonder.

“Perhaps Love is the entanglement that collapses all other possibilities,” said Sapphire.

 


End file.
